Open question and Critical dependencies

[Dave Crocker <dhc2@dcrocker.net>]

Folks,

The current draft charter prompts some basic questions:


1. What does "This solution should work whether or not the peer site supports
the shim6 protocol" mean in the draft charter and how can it succeed?


2. Why is shim6 limited to IPv6?  What is it about the problem space and/or
the solution space that is required to exclude IPv4?


3. What happens to shim6 if it must operate through a NAT?


Items 2 & 3 establish critical dependencies on the wide-scale adoption of IPv6
and the elimination of NATs.  While both outcomes are appealing, all
operational history to date suggests that those outcomes are, at best, far
into the future, if they will occur at all.  (Predictions of changes to the
installed base of widely-adopted services are almost always wrong.)

The danger of critical dependencies like these is that the current work cannot
become widely useful unless and until those dependencies are satisfied.

Hence, the current charter guarantees that the shim6 work will never be widely
useful, if IPv6 does not gain wide adoption OR if it must operate through
NATs.

And please note that I said "or" and not "and".  Hence, the probabilities of
adoption barriers are multiplicative, ie, essentially exponentially worse.


  d/
  ---
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
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